Birkdale: Saturday morning brought a sea change for Ian Poulter. He was no longer the plucky qualifier turning back the years.
Round three of this Open Championship framed him as a potential recipient of the Claret Jug — and a maiden major winner, at 41. Expectation can be a golfer’s worst enemy. The clue was in his press conference on Friday night. Nine years after he finished second in a Birkdale Open, was the coronation finally upon us?
“I think it’s going to be difficult for me to talk about that right now,” he said. “For me to use up mental energy thinking about holding that Claret Jug come Sunday night, there’s a lot of golf to be played between now and then.” Too much, as it turned out.
As the leaderboard crackled with American and South African energy in benign conditions, Poulter was even par at the turn, birdied the 10th and then bogeyed 11, 12 and 13 as Jordan Spieth pulled eight shots clear of one of Europe’s greatest Ryder Cup players. In fact, at break of day, Poulter was tucked in behind the stars and stripes and seemingly ready to pounce, as if this were Europe against the Yoo-S-A.
All morning, Sky television tried to conjure the magic of a first major title for Poulter, the self-made Hitchin dandy now living the Floridian good life. The man himself could feel the vibe. His arrival on the first tee was performance art. A thumbs-up left, a thumbs-up right; a white glove pulled on tight as if he were in an operating theatre.
Then a touch of the cap, a lift of the club, and a female cry from a balcony: “Go on Ian, show ‘em how it’s done.” Poulter strode down the fairway as if this were his precise intention. In 2008 here, he finished second to Padraig Harrington. A week later his wife Katie told him she was pregnant.
“Happy days” is how he remembers them now. But by the time his first tee-shot left the club on this third day, the bar had been set too high. South Africa’s Branden Grace had just set a new record of 62 for a single round in men’s majors. The crowd were fizzing. They were expecting a day of spectacular, scoreboard-shredding golf.
Poulter seemed ready to join in. But a three-putt on the first green took a bite out of his overnight score of three under-par. More pressure was applied by his playing partner, Brooks Koepka, the US Open champion, who struck three birdies on the spin. Younger, tightly focused and sharper with the putter, Koepka was showing Poulter the strength of the opposition as he clung to his dream.
There is no baggage quite like the best-player-never-to-have-won-a-major tag. There are others in that penal colony — but one fewer after Sergio Garcia’s Masters win in April.
Poulter qualified for this 146th Open through the 36-hole Final Qualifying Competition. When arthritis in his feet required laser surgery, he dropped to 210 in the world rankings. Last year he missed the Open and Ryder Cup with injury.
“I was low, I was down, and I wasn’t happy playing golf for a long time,” he says. But he was propelled to this challenging position by the old competitive spirit, and by force of personality. On Friday, “a five or six-year-old kid” followed him “the whole way round.”
Poulter said: “He was in a little yellow jacket, it was pouring down with rain, he didn’t have an umbrella, but was with his dad. And he kept saying, ‘Come on, Poults. Come on, Poults.’”
Poulter promised himself he would use that crowd support to lift him to the top. He spoke of “huge galleries, really pulling for me,” and said: “The large confidence tank that was empty a few months ago is starting to fill up. And I like it when it gets full up.”
The public love this kind of language. And we in the media love it even more. The urge to play it down (“it’s going to be difficult for me to talk about that right now”) is never stronger than his wish to take up a challenge, or cast himself as a golfer for whom anything is possible.
At the Ryder Cup, it certainly is. He has blessed that competition with his eye-popping passion. Majors, though, are another matter, and with each wave of good new players the quest becomes harder.
He looked everywhere for inspiration. “I’m pulling hard this week on memories of how I remember 2008,” he said. His 13-year-old son Luke has set an example, winning pounds 20 off John Daly’s son in a “grudge match.”
Poulter said: “He’s in the shop buying hats and little bits and pieces of memorabilia. He’s a lot of fun to be around.”
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2017
